Kristian Kristensen’s Blog

As I wrote in a previous post, I attended at party at White Lotus in Hollywood during PDC. And during a visit to the restroom I spotted something interesting. After who had done your thing, there was a large collection of complimentary parfume that you could use. That’s not strange, I’ve seen that before, but you could also pick up candy! Right in front of where you washed your hands there were big bowls of candy. Pretty strange place to put candy in my opinion. And to dry your hands you were handed paper towels from a waiter, whose only job was this.

Los Angeles/Hollywood is a weird place.

Thursday was kicked off with a general session by Bob Muglia the Senior VP for the server division. He showed off some of the new stuff coming in Longhorn Server, and talked about a new prodcut released for Windows Server 2003 called High Performance Clusters, which enables you to create farms of computing nodes, to which you can delegate work. It’ll be integrated with Office 12, so that heavy duty calculations can be off-loaded to the HPC farm. An example of this could be an Excel spreadsheet doing all sorts of calculations.
During the keynote Bob Muglia also announced that the missing DVD for The Goods™ could be picked up at the Material Distribution Center. I picked this up later, and it contained a new build of Windows Server Longhorn, and the Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2005.

Next up was Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects and Future Directions in Modelling Tools. This talk was about the work that Microsoft has done with its DSL Tools, an add-in to Visual Studio taht allows you to create DSL’s with a designer and everything right in VS. By doing so you can create DSL for the domain you’re working in with full designer support.
Although the product is a beta (a new one was released at the PDC) it looks very promising! The presenter showed off a demo and the only basic thing missing was designer support to create the designer for the DSL. At this moment you have to do this work by hand in an XML file.
He also said that the product will be a free download which can be used on top of VS Professional. Very cool indeed!

Next was the second part of the session on Atlas. This session drilled down into the details and created a full blown AJAX’ified photo album slideshow. After the session I felt llike I did in my last post on Atlas:

However, the fact that it’s work in progress and just a CTP shows. You still have to write a lot of plumbing script, and some black magic to get it to work

After lunch I attended Windows Vista: Building RSS Enabled Applications which was presented by the Group Program Manager. Here I also found Erik Dibbern Röser (a former Developer Evangelist from MS DK, who now works at Microsoft Business Solutions). The session was okay, although Amar Gandhi (I believe is his name) talked very, very fast (MIT like) and said “you know” a thousand times. He presented the Common Feed List (a built-in feature in Windows Vista), which contains a list of feeds sorted in folders which a user has subscribed to. The different RSS readers can then sync against this store. It also includes an API, which can be used to program against it. And here comes the spooky part: this API is built on COM in C++, not .NET!! However, the API is designed with the .NET Framework Design Guidelines in mind, which means that when genereating a Type Library, it doesn’t create those whacky types, as is normally genereated when creating type libraries from native COM objects. The rationale for this seemed to be that they were very wary of requiring that the different teams who wanted to use the Common Feed List had to lad the CLR (examples of this were IE and WMP). I understand the argument but think it’s a bit lame. I mean everything else is primarily ,NET: Avalon, Indigo, Windows Workflow Foundation, you name it, so why does the new RSS platform have to be built on old technology? The least they could do was offer a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA), such as those created for Office XP/2003. Maybe that’ll come before the release.
Anothter weird thing with the API was the way it dealt with enclosures in RSS feeds. To download these they use Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), which is cool. But when a API user has to find out if a specific enclosure has been downloaded, they have to ask for the local filename and check if that file name exists on the local file system yet. If it doesn’t the enclosure isn’t downloaded, otherwise it is. How about a property guys? IsDownloaded on the Enclosure class would be a good candidate.

Next session was Workflow + Messaging + Services: Developing Distributed Applications with Workflows presented by Don Box and Dharma Shukla.
Warning: goofy stuff coming up
Before the session I went to the toilet, and realised that the dude standing next to me in the booth was Don Box. So I took a leak with Don B

Well outside the restrooms I told Don Box that I had seen him at Developer Days in Copenhagen a long time ago, and that he was the reason I started looking at .NET. I don’t think that the way I said it, aligned with how I meant it to be said, but I guess he got the meaning.
End Warning: goofy stuff coming up

The session was good, showed off the new Workflow engine and how you can compose activities. A really cool feature is that you can modify running workflows, which was demonstrated in the session. Dharma started a workflow, that sent a message and slept for some minutes after which it would resume and just exit. During the delay he logged on to the workflow editing tool (an ASP.NET page), and added an activity “Post to blog”. Which meant that when the workflow later resumed it would pick up this new activity and post a message to his blog. Pretty cool stuff!!!

Next up was Windows Communications Foundation (”Indigo”): Web Services for XML Programmers with Doug Purdy. Man is he energetic, he is like a Ballmer on steroids! Reallly cool demo with a really cool guy. There are some videos with him on MSDN TV, and I think Channel9.

In the evening there was Ask the Experts with dinner in one of the main dining halls. Mostly every team at Microsoft had a table, and you could pick up your dinner and go sit down with whatever team you wanted and start talking about what they did. We didn’t stay for long, because I had some erands to run (big ass shoes for my brother), and I was exhausted off the day.
I met one of the other Danes on Friday and he told me that when Anders Hejlsberg came he was surrounded by swarms of geeks wanting to ask questions and talk to the guru. Whenever Hejlsberg moved the hord around him moved aswell. That must be the closest you get to rock and movie stars in the geek world (at least the Microsoft part of it).
Later in the evening there was Show Off!, but I didn’t attend it so I don’t know how it went. The videos herefrom should be up on Channel9 in the coming week.

After returning to curb side at the hotel, I went down to the Show Warehouse and bough the shoes for my brother. Returned to the hotel, and started packing up all of my stuff. That was a lot of work! I thought that I had brought a large enough suitcase with me, but I could have used a larger one! I had to fill my PDC bag with stuff and carry that with me aswell as my regular back pack. That’s a lot of swag guys! There’ll be a swag report when I get an overview…

Written at 20.15 Danish local time.

Well, I’m not at the PDC anymore, actually I’m sitting at the gate in Copenhagen Airport (CPH) waiting for my plane to Aalborg. There’s an hour till it takes off, and I’ve alreade sat here for an hour or so.

The domestic part of CPH is very boring. Nothing happens, no life, no nothing. There is a Cafe where Kim and I got a “Jydeplatte” (2 sausages with bread), but that’s about all the stuff that’s happening. Actually we got 3 sausages because the lady in the Cafe thought that the sausages were too roasted and therefore she gave us a bonus one.

Oh, and they don’t have Wifi, so I can’t get online. I miss the USA. They now how stuff should work: Coca Cola in plenty amounts to cheap prices and widespread WiFi hot-spots.

Written at 20.20 Danish local time.

After writing my last post I went to the Panel Discussion The Future of RSS: Beyond Blogging, in which Amar Ghandhi (GPM on the RSS platform), Doug Purdy (LPM on WCF), the CTO of Newsgator (forgot his name), the Chief Architect on MBS (forgot his name too), the RSS Evangelist at Amazon (you get the drift), a PM on Start.com, aswell as Robert Scoble.
The discussion was okay, but was pretty main stream. As Erik Dibbern Röser and I talked about, it would be interesting if Microsoft explained their vision with RSS, not just that it should be used, but how it correlates with Web Services and the WCF stack, and when should it be used. What types of information is RSS good for? Can we use it for alerts, and if so how do we ensure that the alert has truly been received and read by the receiver. How about bandwidth control and monitoring. If I publish a price catalog or an inventory status via RSS, and extend the format to use a schema which fits my organization, this document could be pretty big. If my subscribers poll this every 5 minutes (or in shorter intervals), how do I ensure proper response time, and keep bandwidth usage to a minimum.
Maybe I should think more about this and try out some stuff. I’ve also been thining about Distributed RSS, kind of like BitTorrent. Anywar, for another time.

Next up was Avalon + Indigo = Magic with Doug Purdy and Chris Sells

Lunch Session How Microsoft gathers Expense reports on Mobile devices.

So the conference is about to be hour. In approx. half an hour I’ll be boarding the bus that’ll take me to the airport. Today I attended a Panel Discussion on the future of RSS, a session on integrating Avalon and Indigo, and a lunch session on how Microsoft uses Windows Mobile devices to gather expense reports.

I’ll blog about Thursday when I get back.

It’s the last of the PDC. I’m sitting in the main hall checking out my schedule, reading some blogs, syncing devices, and blogging. It’s a bit weird that the conference will be over today when I hop on the shuttle to the airport at 1.30PM. It’s been 4 hectic but exciting days! The PDC Experience is truly amazing.
Last night when I packed up my suitcase I realized how much stuff/swag I’ve got my sweaty hands on. Unbeliveable! I had planned on putting my conference bag in the suitcase, but that proved impossible. Instead I’ll have to walk around with it today. The fact that my brother wanted a pair of Vans shoes didn’t make my packng job any easier. He uses size 12, so that pair takes up as much volume as 5 swag shirts!

Today is mainly made up of Panel discussions, Symposiums, and a couple of Breakout sessions for the needy. At 8.30AM I’m going to a panel discussion on RSS with amongst others Robert Scoble and Doug Purdy. I hope it’ll be interesting.

I stille need to blog from yesterday… Exciting stuff happened…

Written at 8.00AM local time.

I saw the two sessions done by Anders Hejlsberg, first an introduction to LINQ (Language Integrated Query Framework) and C# 3.0. The first session explained the rationale behind LINQ (the impedance mismatch between Data and Objects), and the second drilled down into the language innovations done in C# 3.0.

LINQ is cool! Very, very, very cool. And a great thing about it, is that it doesn’t require changes in the CLR. Everything is done in the compiler, and works on a standard Whidbey CLR.
The C# 3.0 talk dealt with Lamdba Expressions, Expressions Trees, Expansion Methods. Lamdba Expressions allows you to in a shorter syntax specify delegates – method pointers. Expansion methods allows you to expand excisting types, which is used in the System.Query namespace to allow for the From, Where, Select syntax.

I finished the day off with the first session on Atlas – AJAX for ASP.NET. It’s very cool, and very easy to use. However, the fact that it’s work in progress and just a CTP shows. You still have to write a lot of plumbing script, and some black magic to get it to work. But the direction is cool.

After the session I met up with Kim and we took the bus back to the hotel, for a quick visit (15 minutes) before we grabbed a cab to Universal Studios where the Attendee party was held. As with the Influencers Party everything was paid for! Microsoft (actually the Windows Vista team) had rented the entire park, and all the rides, shows, restaurants, etc. was free to use. I went to see the show Waterworld, try the Van Helsing ride (where I got startled 4 times, as the only one…), and took the Universal Studio Tour. The last one was very interesting. You sit in a tram and they drive you around the Studio, and shows you sets, and famous scenes from movies. The cool thing is that this is indeed the palce where they record new pictures and tv shows. So while we drove around, people were filming all kinds of stuff. We drove by the Alias shooting several times. And saw some of the production trucks from CSI. Also saw a special lake, which is used to film all kinds of water scenes. It’s a very small pond actually, with a big screen behind it. After filming they just add the surroundings to the screen, and it looks like the ocean (stuff recorded like this includes The Truman Show).

Took the Shuttle bus back to the hotel (the shuttle service had been expanded to drive between the PDC hotels and Universal Studios), and went to bed at around 10PM. And I was tired!

Written at 1.50PM local time.

On Tuesday evening a Danish PDC Attendee dinner was arranged at Hard Rock Cafe in Beverly Center. Some os us met in the hotel lobby and drove off in a taxi to the Cafe. The driver in my taxi drove like there was no tomorrow! I was beginning to think that I would never pick up another piece of swag!!! Luckily I survived
It was a pretty cool event, and great to meet up with all the Danes attending the PDC: Actually there was a lot more Danish attendees than I had thought. We must have been around 30, and the official Microsoft Denmark guys says that a lot more Danes have actually got conference passes. After hanging out at Hard Rock, it was time to continue on and go to the PDC Influencers party at White Lotus. On another cab and off we went.
White Lotus is apparently a place where the famous and celebrities go out. It’s a combined club and sushi-bar, and everthing was paid for. So free bar, free sushi ,free deserts, and what not. At White Lotus they have bed sheets hanging down from the attic in and on which nice looking ladies dance, twirls, and performs for the audience! There’s some pictures of it in the gallery. It was pretty fun, almost only male geeks at the club with digitial cameras, so the ladies are foreverfied on digital media

A couple of the Cool Kids™ in the .NET world was at the party aswell. I spotted Richard Campbell and Carl Frankling from DotNetRocks, aswell as Rory Blyth from Microsoft. And I shook Carl Franklins hand, and told him how much I like his show, and how it’s saved me for quite a lot of boring bus rides. Pretty cool!

Took a cab back to the hotel; I drove with an incredibly obnoxious driver.
Went straight to bed; it was a long day!

I’ve uploade some more pictures. They are in t he gallery.

This includes pictures from yesterdays General Session with Eric Rudder and Steven Sinofsky, pictures from the PDC influencers party, aswell as pictures from yesterdays Attendee party in Universal Studios.

The COM200 session was okay. It dealt with Indigo, how to create a Message, which is the central piece of the infrastructure. How to create contracts and servies. And how to secure them using InfoCard. In the end the session touched on Windows Workflow Foundation, but I didn’t catch all of it since I had to go for lunch.
Next session up is .NET Integrated Query Framework with Anders Hejlsberg – a fellow countryman. That is going to be exciting!

As I remembers I gotta say how cool it is that there’s WiFi everywhere in the states. Every Starbucks, every everything has a hot-spot, or a hot-spot nearby so you can alwasy get online. Actually this is how I blogged my first entries from the PDC. Since I don’t have internet at my hotel, I wrote the blog entries off-line, grabbed my laptop and went to the local Starbucks to post them. It works great We should have it in Denmark… but I guess that’ll take quite a while before that to happen.

Tonight is the PDC Attendee Party at Universal Studios. Microsoft has rented the entire park and more or less everything is complementary: the food, the drinks, the rides. Very cool stuff. It starts at 7.00PM, and ends at 11PM, and the PDC Shuttle service is extended to drive people from the hotels to Universal Studios. Easy!

Written at 1.30PM local time.